


Crash, Bang, Sleep

by eiqhties



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Angst, Blood, Dreams, Happy Ending, I swear there's some happiness, Inception - Freeform, Injury, Lack of Communication, M/M, Minor Character Death, Threats of Violence, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 04:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7744129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiqhties/pseuds/eiqhties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world of dreams and lies, sometimes it's hard to figure out what parts of you are real. (Inception AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crash, Bang, Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I would strongly recommend a decent working knowledge of the 2010 film, _Inception_ (dir. Christopher Nolan) before reading this. Incidentally, I own nothing to do with the concept of dreamshare/inception, nor am I affiliated with the members/past members of One Direction in any way. This isn't for profit, however; the events and plot that occurs within this story are all entirely my own and I take credit for them. Please don't repost, thanks!
> 
>  **WARNING** : All of the boys in this are sort of Terrible People. There is a lot of violence, talk of murder, use of weapons, etc, etc. Please don't read if you think that this will be triggering or upsetting for you! I don't want my fics to hurt anyone.

The wood of the bar is dark oak, and it’s stained with rings of condensation from years of people being too drunk to remember that they need a coaster. It’s familiar, all low hanging ceiling rafters and dark panelling – heavy fireplaces and low hung benches, old rugby photos and hurleys hanging from various crevices on the walls. It’s cliché, sure – but its comfortable in its clichés. You don’t expect it to be anything more than what it is. Niall has been here before, many times.

Enough times for it to be significant.

This time, however – this time is different. He doesn’t know where his dad is – and this is the pub that they’d always go to after a match. Humming quietly to himself, he drums his fingers on the counter in front of him, and tries to think about the journey here. Tries to think about walking in the door – the narrow entranceway and the stupid coat rack that was always too full. He can’t remember getting here.

He can’t remember, and everything around him warps a little, bubbling – like he’s looking at it through messed up glass.

Lips still downturned, Niall looks behind the bar to see who’s serving – it’s a girl, with soft blonde hair and green eyes. Niall hasn’t seen her in years and years. She’s glaring at the person who’s sat down beside him, eyes focused on him intently. Niall casts another glance around the room – every single person is glaring at the person sitting beside him.   

“Tell me,” The person says, they lean in, body language ridiculously open. Niall could drive a knife into their throat without even fighting for it. “Tell me what you know about inception,” They continue.

Niall laughs, shaking his head. He can feel the rumbling in the bar, the shifting of the people. “I won’t tell you about inception. I _will_ tell you that the only other time I saw a deception this obvious was my first time dreaming.”

Then he shoots himself in the head.

*

The sofa that he wakes up on is cracked leather, olive green. It’s hideous – in the way that tells him only one person could have picked it out. The very same person that’s hovering over him currently, purposefully too close so that their hair is falling in his face. They grin when they see that Niall’s eyes are open, and Niall bats the hair away, scrunching his nose up.

“Rubbish?” Harry asks, pulling away from Niall. He’s scraping the curtain of his hair back into a ponytail with the elastic band he always keeps on his wrist. Niall sits up, pulling the PASIV’s needle out of his arm, then he rubs a tired hand through his hair.

“The worst extractor you’ve ever tried to get me to work with.”

Harry nods, but his eyes are sparkling. He looks amused. “You caught the intrusion, then?”

“Like a stampede rampaging through my brain,” He touches a hand to his head. “Honestly, was so bad that I’ve got a psychosomatic headache. Where the fuck did you find this guy?”

“Simon,” Harry sighs, slumping into the arm of the sofa he’s sitting on. For the first time, Niall notices the bags under his eyes and the frown pulling at his face.

Simon. That it explains it, then.

Simon’s helpful to have – in the way that any source of money is helpful to have. He’s a good contact too, high up in all the right places. Enough of a mogul that people generally can’t touch him. Sometimes, though – sometimes he’s one of the worst people for micro-managing in the business.

Beside them, the PASIV beeps from its place on the floor; the other person in the warehouse wakes up.

He’s scrawny – he looks like the sort of person that only drinks red bull, and knows how to take a computer apart and put it back together. He’s a Jesse Eisenberg in _The Social Network_ kind of guy – all baggy hoodies and thin wrists. Niall wonders how he would fare in a fight: he doesn’t look like he would last three seconds.  

He rubs at his face, pulling the needle out of his wrist. Then, he looks over at Niall, smiling – as if he didn’t just do the worst job that Niall’s ever seen in his – relatively long, rather inclusive - career.

“Wow!” He says, enthusiastically. “You caught me the second that I started talking to you! Simon was right, you _are_ good.” 

“No, I caught you from before you started talking to me, and you’re just very bad,” Niall shoots back. He doesn’t know who this kid is, but five minutes with him is enough to make anyone want to jump out of a window. Currently, the only thing stopping Niall is that he knows how messy deaths like that can be; he wouldn’t want to leave Harry with that kind of a clean-up job.

Instead, he settles for shooting one of his most menacing glares at the guy, who only grins eagerly back. In a way, it’s interesting – seeing how people behave when they don’t know the full extent of his reputation. Niall is far more used to people shitting themselves when he walks into a room. It’s disconcerting – but a lot easier when it comes to getting a job done.

Niall finds that people tend to do what you say if they’ve heard that you can kill them with a spoon. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Niall goes on. “I’m better than most, yeah. That doesn’t mean you weren’t terrible, though. Every single one of my projections was staring at you.”

 “Your subconscious is militarised,” The other guy says. He sounds petulant, like a child. He looks like a child, as well. Niall is sick and tired of dealing with children.

“Look, -” Niall starts, then stops again straight away. He has no clue what this guy is called. 

“It’s Andy,” Harry whispers to him. Well – Harry’s approximation of a whisper, which isn’t a whisper at all – because it’s loud enough for _Andy_ to look at the two of them curiously; head tipped to the right like he’s a lost puppy.

If Niall wasn’t so tired that even his teeth hurt – he would tell Harry off for being so obvious. As it is, he just sighs – trying not to think about how fresh Andy must be that he still gets excited by _militarised subconscious’._ Simon’s picks are getting more and more desperate with every new job that he works.

Someday, Niall’s going to override him. They’ll lose a lot of money, but Niall is probably losing more with the amount of paracetamol he keeps needing to purchase.

“Look, Andy. Of course my subconscious is militarised. We work in _dreamshare_. If people can crack _my_ head, then how the fuck do I have the right to crack other peoples?”

“What Niall’s trying to say is that to be the best. You know, we actually have to be the best,” Harry says. He still sounds insufferably cheerful.

“And Andy, you’re not the best. There is no positive superlative applicable to you. Except maybe the worst. You are the worst,” Niall tells him. He doesn’t even bother to inflict his voice.

Andy deserves to know the truth. It’s been a while since Niall has had to shoot himself out of a dream – and he’s not very happy about it. Killing yourself is never fun – even if you wake up afterwards.

Harry’s mouth tips up to the right, and he looks amused. “Unfortunately, no. You’re not the best, mate. Sorry. Maybe if you come back in ten years?” Harry is still smiling. Niall envies his ability to look like a nice person at all times. Niall’s speech definitely didn’t make him look like a nice person, Andy now looks on the verge of tears. It only serves to make Niall more annoyed.

Harry continues. “You should probably tell Simon thanks, but no thanks.”

“Don’t even tell him thanks,” Niall says, slumping backwards and pinching the bridge of his nose, tight. He hears Andy’s sharp intake of breath – like someone trying very hard not to break down. Then he hears the sound of his footsteps walking across the warehouse that Harry’s rented out. Niall doesn’t turn to look.

“So, how long do you reckon it’s going to be before Simon lets you call Louis?” Niall asks. Harry laughs.

“According to Simon? Forever. According to our increasing pickiness and Simon’s worsening stock? I’d give it about four days. Maybe three, if we’re lucky.”

Niall groans, tipping sideways so that his head is on the sofa’s cracked cushion. He’s been in this business for a long time – longer than most people, and he’s good at what he does. He’s the best on point in the business; meticulous nature and good aim account for a lot. It’s why Harry refuses to work with anyone but him. It’s why he was on Inception.

“How’s Liam?” He asks. Harry shrugs.

“Dunno. Think he was in France, last I heard. Something about the labs there being better. I’ve called him, though. He didn’t pick up so I left a message with Sophia. He’ll be here soon. You know what he’s like.”

“I don’t know how he does it.”

“What, chemistry?” Harry asks. He’s grinning, and Niall sits up again, shoving at the side of Harry’s thigh; it’s hard enough to dislodge him, slightly – but still soft enough that Harry doesn’t fall off the sofa all together.

“No. I can do basic chemistry, thanks. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t think I do,” Harry chirps. Niall shoots him a glare.

“I don’t know how he cares about someone and continues to do the long jobs we do.”

“I’m offended, Niall. Don’t you care about me?” Harry asks. Niall gives him the finger.

“Prick. You know what I meant. Someone that’s not in the business. Someone he has to come _home_ to. Fuck, even having a home would be nice, at this point.”

“Louis does it too.”

“Louis does it badly, too. So badly, he might as well not do it. I just want a solid bed.”

“You had a pretty nice flat in London, last I checked,” Harry says. Niall snorts, shifting on the sofa – trying to stop one of the springs from digging into his back. Honestly, just because they’re participating in illegal activity, doesn’t mean they have to be so fucking _uncomfortable_ when they do. Harry’s got enough money that he should have bought a better sofa than this.

“Yeah, got a real nice flat. Think I’ve slept in it maybe twice since I’ve bought it.”

“You need to stop taking such long jobs.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sorry. Harry, I’m not going to do this job anymore. I have a flat in London and a bed with my name on it. Do your own research on the mark.”

“Point taken,” Harry says. Niall looks at him out of the side of his eyes, suspicious.

“Was that a fucking pun?” He asks. Harry’s answering smile tells him all he needs to know.

This time, the shove is hard enough that Harry falls off the sofa.

*

Harry was right. It takes four days before Simon breaks and calls Louis.

“I fund all this,” He’d yelled down the phone to Harry. “It’s my money that allows you morons to get anywhere in this business! I get you your flights, your access, your fake fucking credit cards. Forgive me if I want a bit of professionalism.”

This was when Niall had jolted the phone out of Harry’s hand and said. “Simon, you know I respect you, but Louis Tomlinson was on my team when we pulled off inception. I think we know how to be professional. Whatever personal issues you have should really get put aside. Modest won’t be happy if you don’t turn up results.”

Louis’ standing in the warehouse two days after that. He’s in jean shorts, and an Adidas hoodie, and there’s a cigarette in his hand. The beanie on top of his head implies that he didn’t wake up with enough time to do his hair, and the second he sees Niall he grins and yells, “Nialler!” Running across the warehouse and flinging himself into Niall’s arms.

Niall catches him, stumbling only slightly backwards with Louis’ weight. Louis is kicking in his arms – like a hyperactive four-year-old. Niall laughs; he’d forgotten how easy it is to laugh, with Louis.

“Alright, Lou? What have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Louis shrugs, releasing himself from Niall’s hold and standing in front of him, grinning. He sticks the cigarette in his mouth, and fumbles in his pocket for a while, before pulling out a bright pink clipper – lighting it. “Poking around in people’s brains, selling their deepest darkest secrets. Trying to convince Briana to let me see my son more often.”

“How’s that going for you?” Harry asks, walking out of the bathroom. He’s wiping his hands on his jeans, and he smiles wide when he sees Louis. Louis grins back.

“Pretty well!” He chirps. “Got to see him on Wednesday’s and weekends for a whole six months. Not much, but it’s a start. Don’t think me jettisoning off around the world really endears her to me. Not that we were ever that close. You wanna see pics of him? I swear, lads, he said daddy the other day. He’s adorable.”

“I always want to see pictures of babies,” Harry says, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. Louis pulls out his phone, thumbing into the photo album and pulling up picture after picture of a chubby one-year-old smiling at the camera.

Niall rolls his eyes at the two of them, looking at the way Harry’s eyes go soft. “Did you give him my presents?” He asks. Louis nods.

“Yeah, ‘course. Can’t have him forget his uncle Harry, eh? My oldest friend? What would he do without you to send him stuffed giraffes and shiny baby books that are too advanced for my level of education.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Lou. You’re very clever,” Harry says. His eyes are wide, and he sounds painfully sincere. Niall snorts. Sometimes Harry is too much to even believe.

Louis doesn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, he playfully slaps Harry in the shoulder. “I know I am. Didn’t you hear, lad? I’m the youngest extractor in the business, and the only one to ever pull of inception. Speaking of. What do we have this time, Nialler? Whose brain am I going to be cracking open? It must be good, like, if you got Simon to call me in.”

“You should probably stop telling people that you crack open their brains. It sounds like you’re an axe murderer, or something,” Harry says. Louis just shrugs, waving a hand at him, and staring at Niall, waiting.

“His name is Elliot Alexander Parker. He’s thirty-five, American, and pretty important in the entertainment industry. He owns thirty-four million shares of the company Four, which is a predominant label in American industry. Apparently, he also has a lot of dirt on a lot of people. Some of the things that he knows, they could some pretty powerful celebrities’ careers into the dust. This is where we come in; we’re going after one guy, but we need to collect information on six people.”

“That’s too broad,” Louis says. There’s a spark in his eye that is painfully familiar. “Even if you were to do a multi-layered dream it would be a mess. Think about it, like. A dream within a dream is the standard, but even something that technical would be hard to do elegantly with this kind of job. Say, you build one storage space per significant person – then that’s three storage spaces per level. If you want to harvest that information, though – then someone has to extract the information from each space. That means that you’d technically need six extractors.

“I mean, I’ve only heard of jobs with two marks at the most, and even then it was normally if they were married couples, or the information was connected. We’re supposed to gain locked information on six separate people that aren’t connected in any real way, from a person that doesn’t have a deep emotional connection to them? This is. This is something I haven’t heard happening, before.”  

Niall doesn’t remember seeing Louis this interested in a long time. His words bely his tone, hands moving in time as he speaks: the ash from the cigarette he’s not smoking falls onto the ground at their feet. The last time that Louis was this excited was Inception. 

He sighs, heavily – the headache that has been sitting semi-permanently in the base of his skull since Harry first called him is threatening to come back in full force.

“I know,” Niall says. “That’s why this job is going to be such a fucking clusterfuck. I mean, you already know that Simon’s on this one, which is why it took us so long to actually get you out here. That’s not even the biggest factor, though. Modest are the ones that hired him.”

Louis whistles, low. “Shit,” He says. “How much are they offering? Something like this, we’re doing a lot, yeah? Must be getting paid in overtime, or summat.”

Niall smiles, wry. “We’re getting paid a lot.” He tells him. Louis grins, takes a deep inhale of his almost-out cigarette, cracks his knuckles and crosses the room to slump down on the sofa. As soon as he does, he winces – leaning forwards and rubbing his lower back.

“Jesus Christ, Harry. You should never be allowed to pick out furniture again.”

Harry scowls. “Fuck off,” He says. “I’m trying to keep a low profile. We’re going to be working on this job awhile – if we deck out an abandoned warehouse like an Ikea apartment, then people are going to start looking, Louis.”

“I know,” Louis says, “But a decent sofa isn’t going to be that suspicious.”

Harry ignores him, sniffing. “So, Niall and I have been brainstorming on this one,” He tells Louis. Going and sitting down on the sofa beside him, it creaks ominously – but Harry doesn’t seem to notice, continuing on. “If we want to keep it to a small team, the ones we know – then it’s going to have to be a deeper dream. Three levels.” 

“No,” Louis says.

“It worked before,” Harry tells him. Louis snorts.

“It barely fucking worked before. You were in goddamn limbo – we incepted that guy with minutes to spare. The whole thing was a fucking disaster! Ed got shot!” Louis turns to look at Niall, his eyes narrowed. “You agreed to this? You? After the fucking mess that was last time? Please, Niall. I thought you were better than this.”

“Hey,” Niall says, holding his hands out – placating. “That won’t matter. Not if I do my job right this time. Even still, though, I can’t imagine that this guy would be militarised – it’s not like the entertainment industry are used to getting infiltrated by any sort of dreamsharing. It’s more commonly used among the military and highbrow politicians, computer technology, corporations.”

“It’s ‘cause all of those people need to fight dirtier,” Louis says, nodding. He exhales out his nose, tightens his right hand into a fist.

“Yeah, exactly. I doubt that Parker will expect any kind of infiltration, so we’re not going to be under the same kind of threat that we were for the Pearson job.”

“We’re still going to need a fucking good team though,” Harry says, carefully. He’s side-eyeing Niall in a way that makes him deeply uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Niall says, slowly.

“What Harry has been too kind to say before,” Louis says, taking another drag of his cigarette, “Is, that in order to get the dirt on six different people at once. We’ll need advanced help.”

“You mean a forger,” Niall sighs. He sits down on the cold concrete of the warehouse floor. Partly because Harry and Louis sprawl in a way that means they’ve taken up most of the sofa. Partly because the uncomfortableness of it is a nice preparation for how he’s going to feel when Zayn turns up.

Because it will be Zayn. It’ll have to be Zayn.

When you’re working a job like this – a job with so many variables that it makes Niall itch for his notebook and ten more cups of coffee – there are a few basic rules. In fact, there aren’t even a few. There are two.

Rule one; hire the best that your money can buy. If you can’t afford the best, give up.

Rule two; hire someone you can trust.

Niall’s mam used to say that sleeping next to someone was more intimate than having sex with them. Sometimes, Niall remembers this – and laughs to himself. He wonders what his mam would say about his job, if she knew. If she was aware that Niall’s spent a good portion of his adult life asleep at the hands of strangers.

So it will have to be Zayn, because – as much as Niall would like to pretend otherwise – Zayn is the best. He’s the cleverest, quickest forger that’s currently still working. The only person that had given him a run for his money was Ed, and he retired after inception – after nearly dying.

Nearly dying, at the hands of Niall’s mistake.

“He’s in Portugal,” Harry says, softly. Niall stares at him, and he shrugs. “What? Liam still talks to him; I talk to Liam. Besides, when Simon contacted me about this job – I sent him an email.”

Niall grits his teeth together. “That’s not what you do,” He says. “You’re the architect. You’re not here to hire people onto the team, you’re not here to contact those people. The second that you brought me into this, Harry, all of that stuff goes to me. I’m the point man, you do get that, right?”

“Please, Nialler,” Louis cuts in – holding his arm out in front of Harry’s chest as if Harry’s going to lunge. “We know that’s your job, and you’re normally fucking good at it, but let’s be honest, if Zayn got wind that you’re the head behind this job, he’d fucking run for the hills. You two are the most dangerous mess I’ve ever seen, and you want me to go three levels deep with you two again,” He grins. “We’re all fucking mental.” 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Niall mumbles. Oddly defensive. Louis actually cackles – head flinging back, feet kicking up into the air.

“Please, tell me what part of you threatening him with a gun and him saying that you ruin everything wasn’t that bad? I’m dying to know. Was it when Ed nearly died? Was it when Harry ended up in limbo? Please, Niall, tell me what part of inception wasn’t that fucking bad?”

“You’re a dick,” Niall says, but there’s no bite to it. Inception was the worst job that he ever did, for every single reason under the sun. Niall’s heard the whispers – he knows his own reputation. He knows what people heard about the way he handled inception.

It doesn’t matter now. There are five people in the world that actually know what happened; Niall would die before he let that number change. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a dick, and you’ve got some seriously unresolved issues with your ex-boyfriend,” Louis shoots back, without missing a beat. Niall’s stomach clenches uncomfortably at Louis’ use of terminology.

“You’re both dicks,” Harry says. Niall has never been more glad for his talent for interference. “I can’t wait for Liam to get here. He’s much more fun to mess with. He’s softer than you two.”

“Harry Styles,” Louis says, eyes wide. “That was almost mean. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of you.”

Harry smiles, looking down at his hands. There’s a ring on his thumb – gold – and he twists it. It’s his totem; there’s an engraving on the inside that no one but Harry has ever read.

“Thanks,” He says.

*

Liam shows up at Niall’s hotel room before he does the warehouse.

Niall had been sleeping – but he jumps up as soon as he hears the snick of the hotel door opening, the tiny _click_ enough to have him fully alert. Niall has been in far too many life threatening situations to not have the correct response to an intrusion in the night.

He sleeps with a gun under his pillow; he’s got it drawn the second that Liam steps into the room.

When Niall sees the figure in the doorway – Liam Payne, with a red scarf carefully pulled over his mouth and nose – he lowers the gun. He doesn’t need to see all of Liam’s face to know who he is; he knows him intrinsically, the shape of him, silhouetted against the darkness in Niall’s hotel room. The light source so small that the picture seems grainy.

“How did you get in here.” Niall says; it’s not a question. He reaches out, turning on the lamp beside his bed.

“The receptionist was very happy to see me,” Liam laughs, blinking in the light and pulling his scarf down. He’s put on a little weight since Niall saw him last, but it suits him well. He looks healthier; muscular and handsome, as though he should be starring as the male-lead in a romance film. He shouldn’t be in Niall’s hotel room in the middle of the night – unflinching as a gun is aimed at him.

Then, Niall had always thought that Liam was better than the world around him. It hurt to be proven wrong. He’s not normally proven wrong.

“Liam Payne,” Niall says. “You have a girlfriend; I can’t believe this. Charming innocent ladies into giving away secrets.”

Liam’s still smiling, “Nah, this woman was about sixty. Apparently I reminded her of her son, who really should call her more. She thinks he has a girlfriend that he’s not telling her about.”

“Why, when was the last time you called your parents, Payno?” Niall asks, sitting up against the large headboard of his bed and rubbing sleep away from his eyes.

“Yesterday, if you must know,” Liam says. “She was asking about you.”

“Christ. Did she cry?” Niall asks. He only met Liam’s mother once before; years ago, when he was still shiny faced and impressionable. He’d been an idealist, then – excited, convinced in the _greater good._ He’d been convinced that he could change things: him and Liam both. Karen had made them a home-cooked meal, and sent them off with far too many leftovers and tears in her eyes.

Niall still sends her a card – on Christmas and her birthday. He always gets one back.

“Yes,” Liam sighs. He sits down heavily at the base of Niall’s bed. “One day I’m going to feel so bad for lying to her that I’ll blurt it all out. Then she’ll never stop crying. Imagine, her Liam, breaking the law. My sisters have sensible jobs. I mean, one of them works for the police.”

“You’re too honest about your family,” Niall says. Liam grins.

“Only with you, Horan, and I know just as much about you. How’s Greg and Denise, these days, innit mate?” He waggles his eyebrows, and Niall clenches his hands into fists. He exhales, slowly, and then holds his hands up – conceding Liam’s point – because with Liam it is just that, a point.

With anyone else it would be a threat. 

There’s silence for a while. The two of them look each other, Liam’s eyebrows are raised, expectantly. Niall holds out for as long as he can, but Liam has always able to hold his own far better than Niall likes to remember him. It’s always jarring, seeing Liam again – like being reminded that not everything fits into perfect boxes inside his head.

Niall is the first to break. With Liam, Niall is always the first to break.

“So, when’s he going to get here?”

“Who?” Liam asks. Niall knows that he’s perfectly aware of who he’s asking about, but Liam is going to make him work for it. He wants to kick something, to scream in Liam’s face that he knows exactly _who_. He wants to rip the wallpaper down from the room around them, push in into the shape of who, write his name into Liam’s skin. Who else?

Instead, he just shuts his eyes, forces himself to calm down.

“You know who.”

“Ah, yes,” Liam nods sagely. “Voldemort.”

“I have other chemists on file, you know,” Niall grits back, eyes narrowed. “You’re not funny.”

Liam laughs. “Yeah, but other chemists would run for the hills if they found out that you were planning to go three dreams deep again. We barely made it out the last time.”

“Because you and Zayn decided that sedating us against our knowledge was a good fucking idea!” Niall yells. He grabs the thing closest to him – an ashtray – and smashes it against the wall. Liam just watches him, unflinching.

“And you missed the fact that the subconscious of the mark was militarised.” 

Niall starts towards him.

If he wanted to, he could kill Liam. If he wanted to, Niall could break both of Liam’s legs and leave him lying on the floor. Niall starts towards him, not sure if he’s going to punch Liam or take it further than that – but Liam just grabs him, wraps him up in a hug and says, “Breathe. Hey, you said his name. That’s a start.”

Niall fights it for a few seconds, twisting and tugging and trying to get away. He could get away. He knows how to. Instead, he fights weakly – lets Liam hold him, and breaths in, out. In, out. Everything about Liam is steady: he’s a lighthouse for Niall’s tired ship, and the other name – his name – _Zayn_ , he’s the rocks.

Maybe there’s another universe where Niall is in love with Liam, and Liam loves him back. Maybe there’s an alternate universe – somewhere – where Zayn isn’t a shadow on the wall, where Niall wakes up to his face every morning. Wakes up to bedhead, to mugs of tea; Zayn drags acrylic paint stained hands down Niall’s stomach, and the constant shaking in his bones has finally settled.

You can make anything an extended metaphor if you try hard enough. 

Eventually, Niall sags into Liam’s arms: he lets Liam support him, because he knows Liam can take it. He is infinitely grateful for the way Liam doesn’t mention the shaking of his shoulders.

“This won’t be like that,” Niall says. “M’gonna do it right, this time,” His voice is thick and wet – and comes out kind of warped through his tears, but Liam holds him tighter regardless.

“I know,” He says. Niall breathes out, slowly.

*

When Louis sees Liam, he yells, “Lad!” And full body slams against him. It’s a testament to how used to this kind of thing Liam is that he stands his ground, laughing.

“Alright, mate? How’ve you been?” He asks. Louis grins, teeth sharp. For how young he is, Louis’ always struck an imposing figure. Niall figures that a few million pounds and some of the most dangerous men in the world will turn you into that.

“Good,” He says. “Got to see my little one, for a while there. How about you? I hear that you’ve still got Sophia. Must be doing summat right.”

Liam smiles; his eyes go soft whenever Sophia is mentioned, all the sharp edges that have settled around him loosening. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Anyway,” Harry says, slapping him on the back. “I hear that you’re the only one who can get in contact with Zayn at the drop of a hat. Is he still on track?”

“Excuse me,” Liam says – looking amused. “Me and Lou weren’t finished our conversation, Harry.”

“Oh, sorry, excuse me Liam,” Harry says. He slaps Liam on the back again, slightly harder. “Are you finished?”

“I don’t know, Louis, are you quite finished?” Liam asks. Louis laughs.

“All of you need to hurry up and finish,” Niall mutters. That, of course, has them all rounding on him. Sometimes – Niall is reminded why Simon hates them working together. He drops in every so often, normally just to stand awkwardly in the room as they all work around him.

He’ll watch them all, eyes narrowed into slits, muttering things about making sure that _all his money hasn’t gone on a Range Rover for personal use, or something._ It had made Niall angry, at the start – defensive that Simon didn’t think he was doing his job. Niall doesn’t have much in his life: it’s nice to have something, anything.

He’s fucking good at his job.

Now, with Louis trying to sit on him, Harry shoving his hair in his face again, and Liam gleefully holding his hands down so he can’t fight the onslaught – Niall can see what Simon meant.

“You love us,” Louis tells him, seriously. He’s managed to twist himself so that he’s sitting on Niall’s chest, and Niall has a particularly nice view of Louis’ inner nostril.

“There are people that are frightened of even hearing my name,” Niall wheezes back miserably. It’s hard to sound threatening when someone is cutting off most of your air supply.

“Unfortunately, the best in the business aren’t those people,” Liam says. Though he does drag Louis off Niall. Niall sits up, rubbing his chest, and sighs.

“So,” He says. “How long is it until Zayn gets here?”

He can feel it, the audible snap in the room at his question. The tension rises to an extent that’s palpable, and all of them look awkwardly between each other.

“It’s really soon, isn’t it?” He asks, sighing heavily.

“It’s tomorrow,” Harry tells him. “He was supposed to fly over with Liam, but –”

“Liam likes you lot too much,” Liam fills in. Niall stares at him, silently. Unfortunately, Liam has known him far too long to react to Niall’s silent stares. Instead, he maintains the eye contact, eyebrows raised. It reminds Niall uncomfortably of his mam.

Looking at him – Niall is well aware that Liam came early as a warning to Niall. His non-vocal way of saying, _Zayn will be here soon_. Niall doesn’t know if he’s angry that Liam still feels the need to coddle him, or if he’s honoured that he ranks highly enough in Liam’s world to justify coddling. Liam doesn’t go into the field, much, but Niall knows – without even thinking about it – that if anyone in this warehouse were to call him, Liam would drop everything in an instant.

“I hate you,” Niall says back, bland. The other three just smile at him, clearly not believing him.

Niall worked a job last month; the architect had choked when Niall had first walked in, and the extractor had been soft enough let Niall do anything he wanted.

Niall is a dangerous man; he stole somnacin from a military base when he was eighteen years old, he knows how to hold a gun, how to fire one. His reputation isn’t something that people joke about – the list of people that Niall has killed runs longer than any one man’s should. He’s not proud of it, not really – people fall as niceties all the time when every single one of your jobs is illegal and corporate, all at the same time. 

Yet somehow – he’s currently in a warehouse with the three people in the world that think it’s acceptable to stick their fingers up his nose when he’s trying to make a point, like they just know that Niall won’t do anything about it. Like they just know that they have Niall eating out of the palm of their hand.

Niall used to be good at hiding what he was feeling. Clearly, somewhere along the line – it all fell apart.

*

They’re working on the first level dreamscape when Zayn arrives the next day. His head is shaved, and he’s wearing a massive parka, hands shoved in the pockets.

“Alright?” He says, when they all wake up. He looks awkward, as though he’s trying to make himself appear smaller than he actually is; shoulders hunched, his hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans. There’s a smile on his face, but it’s small – certainly not wide enough for the crinkles to appear beside his eyes.

Niall used to dream about this – about seeing him again. Zayn Malik, in all his beauty – right in front of Niall’s eyes, like a living painting come to life. Even his skin is covered – every inch of it shining with paint, with art. Niall used to dream about this.

Now that it has finally happened, he feels like it’s choking him. He feels angry. He feels like the concrete underneath him is going to open up and swallow him whole. 

He stays still, saying nothing. Zayn isn’t looking at him, anyway; his eyes are focused on the concrete floor. The toe of his right shoe scuffs the floor. There’s a pregnant pause, then Louis steps forwards.

“I’m good, lad! How’ve you been keeping? I hear you were in Singapore.”

Zayn’s smile gets a little wider – and he takes a small, half step forwards. “Yeah, yeah I was,” He says. “It was nice. Proper hot, like. The team I was with were pretty good too. They had a new architect. She was called Perrie, and she was a proper genius, like. One of the best I’ve worked with since Harry.”

“Not _the_ best though, right?” Harry asks. Zayn’s eyes flick to him, and his smile only grows. Soon, it’ll be fully formed. His eyes will crinkle up, and his tongue will press to the back of his teeth. Niall dreads it happening. He knows that as soon as it does, Niall will fall back into old habits; he’s never been able to stand up to Zayn the way he should.

“Nah,” Zayn says. “You’re definitely still the best, Haz. Don’t worry ‘bout that.”

“S’good to see you, mate,” Liam slaps Zayn on the shoulder. “Sorry about changing the flights around.”

Zayn looks at Niall.

They clock eyes, the two of them standing – the rest of the boys around them – and it feels like someone is playing white noise in Niall’s head. Zayn’s smile fades, and his face becomes solemn. He doesn’t look away from Niall. “No, it’s alright, Li. I get it, like.”

The five of them stand there, awkwardly. Louis, Liam and Harry have moved – probably subconsciously - closer to Zayn, all of their body language soft and relaxed.

It’s probably stupid, that they’re all so comfortable with each other. Niall spends most of his days waiting to get the call that there’s been a casualty – that one of them has died. Trust is important – but so is maintaining a certain distance. If you don’t, things get messy.

Messier.

“So,” Zayn says, coughing. “Why’d you need a forger?”

Louis’ grin widens. “You’re gonna like this one, mate,” He says. “It’s so complicated that even I’m about to run for the hills.”

“Jesus Christ,” Zayn looks at all of them – as if he’s expecting someone to pipe up, say it’s easy. After inception, Niall thought that every other job would be easy. He thought that corporations would leave him alone, that he’d be able to retire – spend his days sleeping in his flat in London, watching golf on Sundays, cooking for himself.

He lasted a week before someone called him, cashing in a favour that they’d been sitting on for years. He hasn’t been back to his apartment since.

All inception really did was ruin what normality was left in Niall’s life for good.

*

Zayn is always the last one into the warehouse, without fail. Niall’s there first – every day. He’s the one that turns the lights on, opens the dusty curtains, tries to get their mock-kitchen to function. It’ll be Niall, then Liam, then Louis and Harry – normally together, because they’re in the same hotel.

Then, finally – Zayn will stagger in. Most of the time he’ll be holding a Starbucks cup, and the smell of cigarettes will be clinging to him. There’s something about the fact that Zayn goes to Starbucks that makes Niall grit his teeth in anger. He wants to call Zayn out, point out that Starbucks are one of the most notable big companies in terms of tax evasion. He doesn’t; it’s pretty stupid to get self-righteous about something like that when you’re an internationally renowned thief.

Especially if you’re the kind of thief that steals things directly from people’s minds.

Especially if you’re the kind of thief that’s killed people.

Sure, the people that he’s killed were all traitors – greedy men, willing to put the lives of the innocent on the line. That doesn’t mean that tax evasion should be high on his list of worries.

They’re sort of in a rut, with the whole espionage. Niall’s research hasn’t brought up anything that’s too concerning – he’s called around, read as much as he can about Parker, and he’s almost certain that the subconscious isn’t militarised. He would be completely certain, but after inception – Niall’s stopped trying to pretend that there are ever certainties in the jobs that they do.

Parker, for all intents and purposes, is the typical business man. He lives alone; a sprawling house set back in Los Angeles, close to where most of his clients are based. There are no significant emotional connections – other than a close relationship with his PA, Helen Francis. She’s married – and fifty-four to Parker’s thirty-eight - so Niall’s dubious that there’s any romantic attachments between them.

He has seen stranger, however – and vows to look into it in further detail.

“Surely the best option is to take it from a business point of view?” Liam asks. He’s sitting in a cream armchair – two days in, he’d dragged it into the warehouse, claiming that he couldn’t sit on Harry’s gross, second hand furniture anymore – and tapping a pen against his lower lip. “He’s not got any personal connections, so we take the first level as an entirely business setting.”

“Yeah. I mean, we’ve already agreed that the first level is going to be a recreation of Four headquarters, haven’t we?” Harry puts in. He’s leaning over the floorplans to said headquarters, absently tracing over the lines of them with his fingertips. Louis leans over his shoulder, looking down.

“I mean, they work in terms of placing context to the people that we need to extract the information about, but I can’t see how we’d work in a safe there. Are we still planning to take each level as separate extractions?”

“I think that complicates things too much,” Niall says. “I mean, that means that we have to plan three separate, one level extractions – and they have to go perfectly. We can’t take it down to the second level and work from there as a second chance.”

“Niall’s right,” Zayn says. Niall resists the urge to glare at him, but it’s close. “We need to be, like, smart about this. There has to be some way that we can influence Parker, until he starts feeding us the information in the lower levels. “

“What about a meeting?” Niall asks. They all turn to look at him, curious. “If we start it as a meeting on the first level – we could be an external influence from Four, another competitor, or something. We could pose it in a boardroom, so that we keep it impersonal. He’s a powerful man, it would be difficult to gain access to something else.”

“So, you mean in this meeting; we could hint that we want the information?” Louis asks. His whole body is slanted forward in his seat, now, and he looks actively interested. Sometimes, Niall forgets what Louis looks like when he’s on a job. All white-hot focus and clear, open eyes. Louis Tomlinson is the best in the business – it can just be hard to remember when you met him at eighteen years old, mismatched stripes, Toms shoes and all.

Niall nods at him absently, chewing on the end of his pen and focusing into the distance – trying to place it all out in his mind. “Yeah, like, bring it to the forefront of his mind. Sort of like Inception – except we don’t need him to feed the information back to himself, we just need him to be aware of it.”

“Then, in the second level we could have, like, phone calls,” Zayn says. “Forging voices is easier for me than forging people. It’s easier to gain access to the voice, as well. Especially with celebrities, I mean, like – they’ll all have public interviews and stuff, yeah? I dunno how we could get the access to them, otherwise. The main issue with this job, I mean, other than the amount of information, is accessibility. So,” He shrugs.

Harry points at Zayn. “That’s good,” He says. He’s scribbling on a page. Buildings, Niall assumes – but knowing Harry, he could also be doing a still life of their coffee mugs on the table; sometimes it’s better not to ask.

“So we’re following the impersonal route the whole way down?” Liam asks. He’s wearing his lab coat, today – the crisp white of its material standing out in stark contrast to the grimy background of the warehouse. To Niall – Liam always used to be like that; a beacon of hope, a go-to guy.

“It seems the easiest way to make sure there won’t be anything too instantly jarring for Parker’s brain to recognise as wrong. We don’t want him to turn on us quicker than necessary.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you worry too much, Horan?” Louis grins, slapping Niall on the shoulder.

“Has anyone ever told you that Ed hasn’t touched somnacin since inception?” Niall snaps back.

The room falls silent; the air is sucked inwards, a black hole of regrets and mistakes. None of them move, the smile slides off Louis’ face like snow falling down a mountain. Everything is cold to the touch. Niall would take the words back, if he could – but there’s no point now.

Zayn stands up, walks to the edge of the room, “Need a cigarette,” He says.

Liam watches him, silently for a few moments. Then he gets up as well. “I’ll come with you, mate.”

No one calls him out on the fact that Liam is not a smoker. Niall watches them go, listens to the way their footsteps become quieter and quieter, until the inevitable silence.

“Niall,” Harry says. It’s slow, like he’s considering every word out of his mouth – Niall doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s twisting the ring on his finger, over and over again. “Niall, I love you, but you need to let it go.”

“It was a mess.”

“It was a mistake we all would have made,” Louis cuts in. “You’re the best, but you’re not perfect. No one expects you to be. Yeah, mate?”

“He seemed to think differently,” Niall says. Louis falters. He leans in, as if he’s going to reach out to Niall – then seems to think better of it. His hand falls, awkwardly between them both, and his mouth opens, silently.

“Zayn wasn’t thinking. He was panicked. He messed up just as badly as you did, Niall. You two just need to. You need to learn to trust each other again. You trust Liam, don’t you?” Harry says. Every word is tentative; he’s scared to say it all, but he knows he has to.

Niall sits there, silently. He puts his hand into his pocket, feels the shape and the weight of the totem in his hand. Then he slaps his hands on his knees and presses himself to standing: it’s his turn to leave the warehouse now.

“Tell Liam and Zayn that I’ll be back in a couple of hours to check on everyone else’s progress, yeah? I’ve got something that I need to do.”

There is nothing in Niall’s job that requires him leaving the warehouse. In fact – Niall leaving could affect the overall job – he’s the overseer. His job is to know everything. Were it anyone else, Niall wouldn’t even have a hotel room, he’d be sleeping on the sofa.

Harry and Louis know this. Niall knows they know this.

No one says anything.

They let him go.

*

Niall got his current totem four years ago.

Before that – when he was eighteen and just a kid, all scrawny with braces and far too many freckles – he’d used his da’s old watch. It hadn’t been anything fancy; a leather strap and a solid clock face. The battery had been run down on it, and he’d never got around to getting a new one, so it hadn’t ticked.

He used to wind it, make people think that it worked. In the dream, the minutes would tick on. In real life, the clock never moved.

Then, four and a half years ago, he met Zayn.

Zayn had been relatively new to the whole thing – but he was a prodigy. There wasn’t a single person working in dreamshare that didn’t know the name _Zayn Malik_. At the time, Niall hadn’t been half as notable – and that had bothered him.

Niall worked hard to get where he was: Zayn changed his face and became an instant hero. He was the first one to coin the idea, the first person to not only _try_ , but to succeed as well. Niall had been prepared to hate him, get some cocky dickhead who thought he was god’s gift to illegal activity.

Instead, he’d got Zayn at twenty-one, all nervous hands and hair in a ponytail. He laughed with his nose scrunched up, and smoked far too much. He used to be the last one in every morning – but he’d stay until later than Niall, sitting in front of a mirror, drawing sketch after sketch, reading books on character study, behaviour analysis.

Niall realised that he wasn’t the only one who worked hard to get where he was.

They hadn’t spoken, properly, until one night. They’d been the only two left – and Zayn had been flicking a Zippo lighter. On, and off in his hands. There had been a cigarette, unlit, hanging out of the right corner of his mouth, and his knees had been curled up underneath him on a large, ratty brown sofa.

“What’s up?” Niall had asked – before he could think better of himself – then he’d crossed the room, sat down beside Zayn on the sofa. Zayn had jumped, looking at Niall in surprise.

“Nothing, just. I like to chill out sometimes, you know? Get some space to myself, smoke a fag, innit.”

“Is this your way of asking me to leave?”

Zayn lights the cigarette, the smell of it permeating through the air. He shakes his head. “Nah,” He says, on an exhale. The smoke drifts through the air – curling tendrils against the rest of the world.

Niall’s watches it, and his fingers twitch, the barest shift against the fabric of his jeans. Most of the time, he’s good at avoiding the temptation to smoke – but here and now, he’s remembering standing behind the bike rack in school, the way Sean would duck down onto his haunches to light the cigarettes – because his lighter was shitty and from PoundWorld.

Zayn sees it – the twitch. Of course he sees it: he’s a forger, a study of human character. Zayn looks at Niall’s hands, resting on his thighs, and his mouth curves, softly at the edge. He passes a box of cigarettes to Niall without saying anything. Niall takes one, grins at Zayn – and puts it in his mouth.

Zayn passes him his Zippo, the metal is plain and smooth in Niall’s hands, but warm to the touch – the flame and Zayn’s body heat to answer for that.

“I’ve had that for years,” Zayn says, nodding at it. “Got it before I started smoking, even. Reckon it’s what encouraged the habit. Can’t have a lighter that gorgeous and not use it. I carved my name into it when I was fifteen, look, see?”

He flicks it open. On the inside of the top – the flat surface – _Zayn_ is scratched in jerky, needle-thin handwriting. Niall looks down at it, silently.

*

It’s another six months before Niall and Zayn see each other again. It’s a messy job, the next time. Their extractor gets shot, and Zayn and Niall end up spending four days held up in a hotel room in Paris. Stuck, in case they get caught too.

Except with Zayn, Niall didn’t feel trapped or confined. Zayn has an A3 sketchbook, and he draws large, whirling pictures in it. Pictures of Niall laughing, sleeping, watching TV. They spend all day lying in the one double bed together –

(“It looks less suspicious if we go in as a couple,” Niall had said, in Spanish, passing the woman a pile of euros and smiling.

“Yeah, right, you just want to get me into bed, innit?” Zayn replied back. His accent was atrocious, but his tongue pressed to the back of his teeth when he smiled.)

It’s first time since he’d been in the military, since the start of Project Somnacin, that Niall has been able to lie around. No imminent responsibilities. No ringing of a phone.  

When they finally leave – the threat taken care of by their team’s architect - Zayn presses the lighter into Niall’s palm.

“Keep it,” He says. There’s something settling along the lines of his forehead, his mouth is a flat line. Niall looks down at the lighter, and then back up at Zayn. “I trust you,” Zayn says.

Niall keeps it.

*

After storming out on Harry and Louis, Niall ends up sitting in a tiny café. He chooses a table outside – rickety and metal and too ornate to be properly functional, but he wants to smoke, the smell and weight of a rolled cigarette in his mouth something that he’s come to rely on, these past few months.

Placing his paper cup of plain black coffee on the table, he smokes with one hand. With the other, he flicks his lighter on and off.

On and off.

He doesn’t look on the inside for the name that he already knows will be carved there. He doesn’t need some outside source to prove that this is reality. If it were a dream, there would be brawling – people’s heads smashing off the pavement, teeth and boxes of fruit exploding in front of him. If it were a dream, it would be exploding with colour – red, splashing against the tarmac of the streets.

If it were a dream, Zayn would be sitting across from him.

Niall sighs, takes a drink of his coffee.

“You alright? The coffee is good?” A girl asks him; she’s clearing the litter off the other outdoor tables. She’s heavily accented – French, from the North, probably - and it surprises Niall to hear it here, in America. He hasn’t heard the French accent in a long time. It makes him think of the four days in Paris, of Zayn, and he wants to roll his eyes at himself: is there anything he won’t make about Zayn? 

“Oui,” Niall replies. “C’est bon. Merci.”

“Ah! Parlez-vous français?” She asks. She looks excited – probably hasn’t been able to speak her home language in a while. Niall looks at her, her hair is brown and curly, twisting in to frame her face. She’s thin, a black bobble snapped over the fragile bones of her wrists and there’s creases on her white apron. She’s smiling as she looks at him, a gentle, unassuming sort of smile.

“Oui,” Niall says again. He downs his coffee in one go, and then pushes himself to stand. He feels awkward, now – obvious and large, in ways that he so rarely does. Niall isn’t the sort of person that stands out in a crowd, not really. Now, though, now attention has been drawn, and he’s already on edge. “Désolé, mais je dois y aller.”

“Oh. D’accord,” She looks sad for a second – clearly, she misses home a lot– but she visibly pulls herself together and nods at him, smiling again. “Au revoir, monsieur.”

“Au revoir, madame,” He says back, bowing a little. She flushes, her smile widening and then waves at him; a ripple of her fingers, from the baby finger inwards. Then Niall walks away.

Back in the warehouse, the air is thick with tension. Harry and Louis are crowded around Harry’s blueprints. Louis’ leaning over him, his arm looped over Harry’s shoulders, while Harry explains something to him quietly. Liam is scribbling something in a notebook, bent over on the opposite side of the warehouse – where all his chemistry equipment has been set up. Somnacin isn’t an easy blend to make: it sells for more than Niall can comprehend on the black market. It’s why they always hire Liam; if you know someone that can make it, you get someone that can make it.

Zayn is sitting on the sofa, headphones in, all of his attention focused on the laptop in front of him. Niall would place money on it being interviews of the celebrities he needs to forge the voice for. Zayn spends a lot of time doing research – quiet, controlled, solo focused research. Niall tried to get him to explain it, once, but all it had done was make both of them feel tired.

Niall doesn’t have the kind of brain for forging – something like that involves fluidity, a sense of the incorporeal – you have to acknowledge the twists and turns of dream logic, follow rules and manipulate them simultaneously. It involves the kind of thinking that is the direct opposite of Niall’s carefully structured, non-linear perspective.

Niall sighs, and Liam looks up from his work, grinning at him. “Look, the prodigal son’s returned!”

“Piss off, Liam,” Niall shoots back, tired. Liam smiles at him, softening slightly.

“Here, come here, yeah? I’ve been making some alterations to the compound that I want to get your opinion on.”

Niall walks over to Liam’s workstation. It’s messy, but it’s a controlled kind of mess. Sloppy piles of everything dotted about. He leans down, looking at Liam’s scribblings, and frowns. “I mean, I can check the numbers when you give me the final product, but I can’t read the work in progress, you know that, right? I’m a point man, I never trained to be a chemist.”

“I know,” Liam ruffles his hair, and Niall scowls. Liam is two weeks older than him, and two inches taller. It’s been a point of exploitation for as long as Niall has known him. “Look, what I’m trying to work out is a way to run the sedative with the somnacin, but to erase all the negative side-affects.”

“Like the fact that we almost died, the last time?” Niall asks, dry. Liam shoves him.

“You should smile more, Niall. You used to look so lovely when you smiled.”

Niall looks at him out of the side of his eyes. He could get angry. He spends a lot of time thinking about all the things he _could_ do when around Liam. Instead, he says, “You sound like my mum.”

“Maura is a very intelligent lady,” Liam says, sagely. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that you’re bloody miserable, and I’m trying to show you something important.”

Liam is looking at him now, waiting. He knows that Niall is going to give in soon.

Niall sighs. “Break it down to the base numbers for me,” He says. Liam smiles, and starts writing.

He talks as he works – a constant stream of careful words and gentle explanation. Things like this are part of the reason that Niall found Liam so easy to trust; he’d always been able to share just enough that you felt like you were involved with the work. For someone that’s clumsy with words, Liam has made it an art form to be just clumsy enough.

It was what made his betrayal so easy, so simple. Niall saw the numbers, read the words across the page – he saw the mixture, knew about the sedative. He knew all the details; he just didn’t know _all_ the details.

Zayn did.

Niall looks over at Zayn. He’s still curled up, headphones still in – but there’s something about the way he’s sitting, the way his face is angled. He’s so carefully positioned, that Niall knows it isn’t natural. Zayn might be the forger, the study of human character – but you aren’t a good point man unless you know how to catch the little details.

Zayn is no longer listening to anything through the headphones. He’s twisted, purposefully, so that it looks like he’s not looking at Niall. This is Niall’s invitation. Zayn knows Niall knows he isn’t working. Niall knows Zayn knows. It’s a complex dance, a question without an answer.

An answer without a question.

“You could just talk to him, you know,” Liam’s voice is light – but Niall can hear the underlying frustration. It must be awful, to be working in a team that’s not a team at all. Inception might have been dangerous, downright stupid, the worst few months of Niall’s life, but at least they _talked_ back then.

“I do talk to him,” Niall says.

“Without the rest of us here. Not in a warehouse. Not about dreams.”

“Our whole lives are dreams.”

Liam laughs, shaking his head and rubbing something out on one of the pages in front of him. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live,” He says, sagely. Niall raises his eyebrow.

“I’m going to go talk to Harry and Louis, now,” He says. “Because, if I’m not wrong, you just tried to use a Harry Potter quote on me.”

“I did,” Liam doesn’t even sound slightly embarrassed.

“I meant what I said about finding another chemist.”

“No you didn’t.”

Niall doesn’t bother with a reply.

*

This time, when someone comes into his hotel room in the middle of the night – Niall is awake.

There are a lot of downsides to working in dreamshare. Threats of guns, violence, death, drugs, the government, the military – they all play into it. Lack of stability, lack of trust, lack of loved ones. They’re all there too.

The worst, Niall finds, is the lack of sleep. There are only so many times you can force your body into shutting down before you stop being able to sleep correctly. He doesn’t dream, anymore. He barely functions, really.

So this time, when someone comes into his hotel room in the middle of the night – he’s awake, in bed, watching infomercials. There’s a quiet kind of comfort, in three am infomercials: structure, regularity, bold, bright colours. You can rely on them, to do the same ridiculous things, over, and over again.

Niall wishes that people were the same way, because right now, he’s looking at Zayn Malik’s tired face, and he never saw this coming.

“I didn’t see this coming,” He says, because him and Zayn have spent a lot of time not talking, and it hasn’t worked. Niall is starting to feel like he doesn’t have many other options.

“Yeah, well, neither did I, like. Wasn’t really planned.”

“What, did you sleepwalk here?”

Zayn shakes his head, laughs without mirth. “Summat like that. Dunno what I’m doing, really. Just, we can’t go on not talking, yeah? You talk to Liam.”

“Liam didn’t wave a gun at my head and tell me that I was the one responsible for everything going wrong.”

Zayn’s face hardens. “You weren’t exactly innocent, mate. You’re supposed to know about things like that! You’re supposed to be the one that fucking tells us.”

Niall scrambles out of bed. He’s only wearing a ratty, old grey shirt and boxers – it’s far from dignified. His gun is still under his pillow, far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to reach it without Zayn seeing him. It doesn’t matter, though – there is more than one way to kill a man, and Niall is good at a lot of them.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Zayn?” He asks – yells it, rather. The anger that has been simmering for so long under the surface finally bursting out, full force.

He spares a moment to be glad that his room is less of a room, and more of a suite – god forbid people were to complain about him to the hotel management – that would be all he’d need, an army of security figures up here, and the shreds of his self-respect gone forever.

“It means that you should have caught the fact that the subconscious was militarized, Niall! You’re good at what you do, no one is fucking denying that, but Ed could have fucking died down there. Jesus _Christ_ Niall, Harry went into fucking limbo!”

“Ed only would have fucking died because you and Liam didn’t think that telling us about illegal fucking sedation was important,” Niall feels like he’s splintering. He’s a boat, hitting the rocks – pieces of wood splintering, sinking into the depths of the ocean. Zayn Malik is the lighthouse that was never turned on; he’s the catalyst.

“I am sick to fucking _death_ of screaming at you two about this. Yes, I made a mistake. You know what, though? I feel fucking bad. I feel terrible, Zayn. I haven’t slept properly I months. I can’t go home to London. I can’t stop working, because I have got to be better, I’ve got to come back from that. You think that I’m still in this business because it’s fucking fun? Fuck you.”

Zayn is silent. Standing, in the dim light of Niall’s hotel room, the shadows are falling across his face heavily. He looks tired, bone tired, and pale. He looks like he hasn’t considered what he’s saying; caught up in all the accusations, the wild-hot sting of a fight.

He looks like everything Niall fell in love with – all those years ago – like the boy with the silver Zippo lighter, and one of the best brains that Niall had ever seen. The quick thinker, the artist. The soft boy from Yorkshire who liked rnb music and horribly sweet ciders. 

Niall sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands.

Bizarrely, in that moment, he wants a guitar. He hasn’t played in years – since long before he’d even heard of a PASIV. That doesn’t mean that the urge isn’t there, sometimes – the childish desire to pick one up and start tuning it, strumming absent chords.

Anything but sitting here – the silence so oppressive that the apocalypse could begin and it would still be more bearable.

“I’m – shit,” Zayn says. His voice cracks as he speaks, and Niall looks up at him; as he watches, Zayn lifts a hand to his face, rubbing it over his eyes. He’s trembling. “I’m sorry. I don’t – I’m not sure why I’m here, like. Liam was the one, who -- Um. I just. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ironic,” Niall says. Zayn scoffs; a single _ha_ , and his mouth twitching just slightly into a smile that’s not really a smile at all.

“Yeah, well. I hear using the PASIV constantly is no way to live your life, innit? Couldn’t exactly sleep with that.”

“Really?” Niall says, deadpan. “I would have never guessed.”

Zayn laughs again. Rocks forwards on his feet slightly, the shoves his hands into his pockets. “I should – I should go.”

“You should,” Niall says. They look at each other for a while, suspended – the air around them tense.

It isn’t the romantic, soft kind of looking at each other – not the sort that you see in rom-coms, in happy films. It’s the kind that says, _I've known you for too long_ , that says, _You’re probably going to kill me and I’m probably going to let you_ , that says, _I know what you’re thinking, and I you know what I am_.

Niall could fuck Zayn, now. They both know it. Niall could invite Zayn to stay the night – kiss him hard and hot and violent, teeth nipping at the edges, the gentle reminder that a bite is always lurking behind the surface. The two of them know all the ways to tear each other apart; they always have.

Niall doesn’t do that.

Instead, he stands stock still, waiting. Zayn shifts – as if he’s going to start towards Niall. Then, he seems to think better of it – he turns around on his heel, and walks out of the room. The door shuts behind him, and Niall is left standing there – looking at the plain wood of it for several moments.

The air is quiet around him. Niall sinks to the bed, and puts his head in his hands.

*

The job is stagnating, and Niall is going stir crazy stuck indoors all day.

They have the basic principles in place – Liam’s compounds are sound, and Harry’s dreamscapes are nothing if not meticulous. Niall has drilled all of his possible sources for information – as far as he’s concerned, he knows as much about Elliot Alexander Parker as is possible to know.

He thought that about inception, though.

The days pass as though they’re underwater. They have two weeks left until their opportunity to put Parker under comes about – he has an appointment, a regular check up with his doctor – but Simon’s paid off the doctor: under the guise of a general test, Parker will go to sleep.

Then the rest of them will move in.

As it is, Niall’s days are spent in front of his laptop – a slightly discoloured once-black Dell, that he can’t bring himself to part with – frustrated and running through lines of code, emails and social media, trying to find anything he might have missed.

“Leave it, Nialler,” Liam says, at one point. His hand comes down to rest on Niall’s shoulder, and Niall flinches away from the touch, clicking on something else. “C’mon, we know more about Parker than his own mum does at this point, yeah? He’s not militarised. You would have found it.”

“That’s what I thought, before,” Niall snaps back, and shoves Liam away. He turns back to his computer, and tries to ignore the sad look that Liam shoots him, all wide open eyes and frowning mouth. 

Niall groans, shutting his laptop and putting his head down on top of it. He could sneak out for a cigarette – he hasn’t had one in ages – this air is too thick, and he’s dying indoors. Harry’s hunched over his desk, Liam’s gone back to his mock-up lab, and Louis’ leaning over Zayn, the two of them conversing in hushed tones, Zayn with a stack of papers in his hands.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” He says, to the room at whole. His fingers are tapping, restlessly at his sides. Normally, he tries to hide it – some strange sense of shame that brews when he thinks about the reliance he has on his habit – but since inception, it’s been so much more present in his life that he feels sure everyone must know – doesn’t even see the point in continuing the pretence, anymore.

Except, apparently, he’s better at keeping secrets than he realises.

Harry, Louis and Liam turn to look at him, they’re incredulous – the look in their eyes indicating that they don’t quite believe what Niall is telling them. Only Zayn stays motionless; he’s always been around for Niall’s bad habits – he’s always managed to catch Niall at his worst.

“You don’t smoke,” Harry says. Niall raises his eyebrows, pulling an unopened packet of tobacco from his jacket pocket, along with filters and skins.

“Are you sure?” He says, slowly. Then he focuses’ his attention back on the desk. There is something in the routine of rolling cigarettes that’s oddly calming, the thick, awful smell of it – the roll of the tobacco between his fingers. He tucks it behind his ear when he’s finished, and pushes his chair out from his desk. There is some kind of perverse pleasure in the way Louis flinches at the scrape of the rickety metal against the concrete.

Zayn looks up, then, something heavy in his eyes.

Niall holds the eye contact – and slowly, Zayn puts the papers down on the table in front of him.

“I’ll come with you,” He says. Once, there would have been a smile behind the words – something soft at the edges. Now, it’s just sore, an ache – at the back of his throat, the morning-after feeling: when you wake up, sweaty against the sheets, come flaking off your stomach, head heavy.

“Sure,” Niall says. Louis makes a step forwards, as though he’s going to join them, but Harry shakes his head empathetically. His hair moves with him, making the whole movement look even larger than it already is, and Louis holds back.

*

Outside the warehouse, there’s a grotty, dingy alleyway. It’s all high grey walls, and a distinct lack of sunlight: it smells of piss. There isn’t even any graffiti to break up the monotony of the image.

Niall stands, leaning against one of the walls, with his cigarette in his mouth. Zayn pulls one out of a packet – he always was more into brands than Niall – and leans beside him. Their shoulders don’t touch, but they’re close enough that Niall can feel the heat from Zayn’s body, the sheer humanness of him.

Niall thinks about Zayn’s lighter, in his pocket – still functioning, even now. Every time it runs out, Niall refills it with lighter fluid – gentler with it than he is with almost anything else in his life. He debates, for one ridiculous second, pulling it out. Letting Zayn see that he still carries it – what it means to him.

Instead, he takes out the terrible lighter he bought in the newsagents for a pound, back home. It flickers a few times, before the flame actually holds long enough to light his cigarette. Though, when it does, Niall remembers why he took up the habit. It’s not the taste: cigarettes never taste, or smell, like anything other than what they are – thick, cloying and oppressive.

The habit is a comfort – though. Those moments, between lighting the cigarette – the sound of it burning, the feeling of the smoke in his mouth. It’s a moment to pause, a purposeful removal from the rest of the world around him. Niall discovered, pretty early on, that no one suspects you with a cigarette in your mouth. No one bothers to look at you, wonders why you’re hidden in the corner of a street.

“How come the others don’t know that you smoke?” Zayn asks. Niall looks at him, at the way he’s leaning heavily against the wall – and the way the smoke curls out around him. The way he holds his cigarette hasn’t changed, his fingers curving around the narrow stick.

Niall watches him, and the same ache is still there. Sometimes, when he’s sitting up at night – praying for a dream, for silence, for his brain to shut up – Niall convinces himself that it is always going to be there. The time honoured question: can you share dreams with someone, and not love them in some way.

“I just never got round to telling them,” Niall says. Zayn laughs, and as he does so, more smoke pours out of his mouth – trickling into the air around them.

“You smoke all the time, though,” Zayn says, frowning. “Been smoking since you were a kid.”

“Thanks,” Niall says, dry. “I was there.” He inhales, deep, and then exhales again – tipping the back of his head against the wall behind him and shutting his eyes.  “I’ve been trying to quit,” He says, then.

Zayn grins. “You’re terrible at quitting things.”

“What?”

“You. You’re, like, the most loyal person I know. You’d die before you’d give up on a job, innit?” Zayn’s voice is soft, quiet in the street. “I’ve noticed.”

Niall snorts, “Yet you still thought that I purposefully fucked you over on inception.”

Zayn winces. The fingers around the cigarette tighten. “It was – I didn’t –”

“I get it. You fucked up, so you tried to pin it on me. I know, Zayn.”

“We could have died.”

Niall grits his teeth. “We’ve been over this.”

“No, sorry. I mean. You could have died. Um, you, Niall-” Zayn’s voice cracks on Niall’s name. “You could have died.”

Niall blinks. He can’t believe that this is happening. Here, now – at this moment in time. Zayn is standing, still, but he’s turned his face towards Niall’s. His eyes are open and his mouth is soft: he looks like a smudge in the corner of a painting. He looks like the trails of the pencil that are still left, even after you’ve rubbed something out.

“So could you,” Niall says. Zayn shuts his eyes, and Niall pretends not to notice the tear that tracks down, slowly – mapping all the curves of Zayn’s face. The alley has never felt so still – each second lasting hours, like they’re in a dream, as opposed to standing here. Niall has the urge to check his totem, but Zayn already has so much on him. He can’t know that, too.

“I know,” Zayn whispers. It’s soft – the words catching between the two of them. There is so little space between the two of them. “I know. I know – God, I’m sorry, Niall.”

“You and Liam put us in that position, not me,” Niall says. “Yes, I missed something in the research, and I’m paying for that, but you two were the ones that walked us down there without telling us about the consequences.”

Zayn tips forwards, a half aborted move that ends up leaving their faces even closer together. Niall’s cigarette has burnt out, and he lets it fall to the ground without looking – too busy watching Zayn, instead.

“I didn’t think,” Zayn says. His voice is still quiet between them, barely more than a whisper between the two of them. They should go back inside. They should get back to the job. Simon spends so long talking about how unprofessional they all are; Niall is finally proving him right.

“Clearly,” Niall says, sharp and sarcastic. Zayn frowns.

“Liam was – I don’t know. Liam was Liam, innit? He made it all sound so plausible, and Louis was so fucking _excited_ , and I just. I didn’t want us to fail. I never even thought. Like, I never thought that – that. Well –”

“You never thought that someone could get hurt? Fucking around with people’s brains? Knowing that if you died, you’d get sent to limbo? It never occurred to you that someone might get _hurt_.”

Zayn rears back, anger sparking in his eyes. “Fuck you, Niall. You forgave Liam for this! I didn’t mean to; you know I didn’t. Why the fuck are you still putting me through all this shite?”

“Yeah, well. I’ve never been in love with Liam, have I?” He snaps back. Says it without even thinking – just speaks. The words fly out into the air, suspended between the two of them. All emotion but shock falls off Zayn’s face, the muscles in his body all go slack: he stares at Niall, wide eyed.

“You what?” He asks. His voice cracks in disbelief.

“You heard me,” Niall says. Then he turns around and storms back up to the warehouse, leaving Zayn standing there, stone-still.

*

Niall and Zayn had sex for the first time in Toronto. It had been the night before a two-level extraction for some lawyer who had stolen information from a rival company. Zayn had been forging his wife, and Niall had spent a month trying to learn corporate law in a rented apartment with far too many earth tones in it.

Zayn had showed up at the door with a half bottle of vodka and a packet of Niall’s favourite tobacco; Niall hadn’t the heart to tell him to go home and get an actual night’s sleep, because Niall never had the heart when it came to telling Zayn to leave him alone.

They’d fucked on the sofa to a _Mario_ album playing from the awful speakers on Zayn’s phone. Zayn had been laughing, half drunk and pliant in Niall’s arms. He’d pressed sloppy, wet kisses to the line of Niall’s jaw. In a particularly quiet moment he’d whispered, “You’re m’fave, Niall,” half slurred and unfocused.

Niall doesn’t know how much of that first time Zayn remembers. In Niall’s memory, he’s one hundred percent sober – every inch of him dedicated to remembering the exact weight of Zayn’s hands on his shoulders, the diameter of his pupils. He knows that they’d been drinking, though, that there are words and moments that slipped his mind.

He’s never asked Zayn about it.

Maybe he should have.

*

It’s the day of the extraction.

Louis is vibrating, hands tapping restlessly on every surface available to him. He keeps setting the radio to one station, waiting just long enough for a song to start, and then changing it again. Niall grinds his teeth in frustration, looking away from the movement and out of the window.

Liam is a slow driver. Nothing like the reckless, punchy way that Niall normally drives himself; then again, Liam probably hasn’t been in half as many car chases that Niall has.

“So how long is this going to take?” Harry asks, again. Niall wants to hit him. Instead, he curls his hands into fists and refuses to answer.

“If we do it right, three hours,” Liam says, because he’s Liam - and he’s far more patient than the rest of them.

“That’s over a day on the first level alone,” Harry says. Niall grits his teeth and looks down at his hands.

“Yeah, that was the idea, Harry,” Louis laughs.

“Just checking.”

“Checking what? You should know everything, Harry. This isn’t a fucking test run. This is going to be the real mark, a real subconscious,” Niall snaps. Harry turns his head to look at him. They’re beside each other – because Liam is driving, and Louis is shot gun, and Niall wasn’t going to sit next to Zayn.

Niall and Zayn haven’t spoken since the time in the alley. Everything is tense, and twisted – and they’re already going into this job with far too much mess. Niall doesn’t need Harry messing it up for him, too.

“When have I ever done a bad job?” Harry asks.

Niall turns to look out of the window again. Harry grabs him by the shoulder. “No, seriously, Niall. When have I ever done anything less than perfect? Huh? I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one in this car that’s never messed it up.”

“Haz,” Louis says, sharp, and warning. Harry ignores him.

“No, c’mon, Lou. You were a mess, innit? Don’t think I didn’t notice that you were bringing in rogue projections of your sisters, of your mum, of your fucking kid! That whole job was filled with it! And Liam and Zayn are off dosing us all with god knows what. Not to mention Niall misses the most obvious thing in his research. So _sorry_ if I ask you all how long this is going to take, but I thought that I might as well be the only one that actually goes in knowing what the bloody fuck we’re doing.”

There’s silence for a few moments, as all of them try to take in Harry’s outburst. Harry is the last out of all of them to get angry in usual circumstances, but, when he does finally let loose it’s hard to stop him. Once he threw an ashtray at Louis’ head. Louis ducked it – but the ashtray embedded itself into the wall behind them.

That had been on inception – when Harry had been accusing Louis of lying to them all; Harry and Louis used to be like brothers – the two of them shared a house for a while, back in the day. He’s always been the first to learn Louis’ truths. He was the first to find out about Freddie. He was the first to call him out on it.

“Alright,” Louis says, finally. He twists so that he’s looking at Harry, and smirks. “You called us out on our shit, Styles. You happy now?”

“Fucking ecstatic,” Harry says, flatly.

The rest of the ride is in silence.

*

When they get to the practise, Louis pulls the PASIV out of the car, and turns to grin at Niall. “C’mon, Niall,” He says. “Lighten up. Nothing could be more of a fuck up than inception, yeah?”

Niall snorts. “I sure hope not,” He says.

*

With all of Niall’s money, he probably qualifies as being somewhere close to the one percent, by now. It doesn’t mean much to him: he’s a career criminal – they probably exist on an entirely different plane, a new kind of one percent. As a result, he’s never been very acquainted with private practises.   

For years, Liam has been as close to a doctor as he’ll ever allow himself to have. Most of the time, he tends to injuries himself – he still has shaky, blurry memories of Australia. Downing half a bottle of vodka and pouring the rest of it on a stab wound in his side. The stitches were terrible, and as a result he still has an ugly scar, twisted and jagged.

Niall paces the corridors of the practise, feeling antsy and contained. He wants to bite his nails – but Zayn is sitting on the floor close to him, regarding him with a bored expression: Niall refuses to give Zayn more ammunition than he already has.

“Calm down, man,” Zayn says, eventually. “You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

“He’s late,” Niall says. “Parker is late for his appointment. He’s never late, I’ve done my research, and Parker is never late, but he’s late for this.”

“Is he?” Zayn asks. Niall stops pacing, and turns to look at Zayn.

“How did we get here, Niall?” Zayn asks.

Niall’s blood runs cold. He looks at Zayn, and Zayn looks back.

Except.

Except there’s something wrong about it – like trying to look someone face-on out of the corner of your eye. The same kind of blurring of the edges and warping of rooms that comes with a lucid dream. Zayn isn’t real – which means that Niall is dreaming, but if Niall is dreaming, Zayn should still be real.

Something is very, very wrong.

Niall pulls his gun out from the waistband of his suit trousers, and has the barrel of the gun pressed to his head, ready to shoot – when Zayn crashes through the door. The real Zayn.

He’s sweating, and red faced, and gasps, “ _Don’t_ ,” just before Niall pulls the trigger.

Niall stops, and turns.

The dream starts to collapse.

*

“What the fuck is going on?” Niall yells, staring at Zayn. The walls are crumbling down around them, and Zayn has an iron-hot grip on his wrist, pulling him through the corridors. Niall looks around, eyes wide.

Harry was the architect on this job. He’s the best in the business – steady, reliable, quietly creative. Harry has the talent that most dreamers wish they had: he’s able to slip between most dreams unnoticed, giving the impression that he was always meant to be there.

This architecture is nothing like Harry’s. It’s not even the setting that they’d agreed on. Here, in the crumbling walls, there is a heavy, thick atmosphere. The dream is a feeling all around them: Niall wonders what’s going wrong with his head that he didn’t notice it instantly. There’s a feeling of wrongness hanging around.

Zayn’s still pulling him along. Behind them, a wall shakes and then falls. It crashes – and Niall shakes his head. His free hand tightens on his gun, but there’s nothing to shoot. No one else is around.

This is the scariest thing of them all.

“Zayn,” Niall says. Zayn doesn’t even glance at him – the rumbling of the buildings is so loud, it’s possible that he didn’t even hear him. The ground beneath Niall is unsteady, trembling like something is barely contained beneath it. Zayn’s breath is panting, obvious even against all the other noises around them.

Still pulling Niall along, Zayn turns a sharp corner. The ground is steadier, here – but the noise of the dream collapsing is still so loud that Niall doesn’t know if he can focus on anything else. At this stage, it’s not even noise – it’s the existence of noise, a presence in the back of Niall’s mind.

Zayn stops, suddenly. His mouth is open, and Niall can see the rise and fall of his chest. It hurts – in the way that things about Zayn always hurt. His mind is still buzzing; the dream is still shaking.

There is still no one else around.

“What the fuck,” Niall says, again. “Is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Zayn replies. His mouth is twisted downwards. He’s shaking; the second that Niall sees it, he wonders how he didn’t notice before, because Zayn’s moving so much it looks like his skeleton is trying to rip its way out of his skin. “I don’t know what’s happened. This isn’t militarisation. I can’t find Harry, so I don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that I woke up in this building, and everything felt, like, _wrong_.”

It still feels wrong. Beside Niall, the wall judders – a brick falls down and crashes beside his feet. He jumps, and then hates himself for reacting to it. Zayn looks at it too, and there’s something wrong with his expression – it’s blank, almost unseeing.

“There was a projection of you before,” Niall says. Zayn’s eyes snap up to meet him. “Are you real?”

Zayn laughs, “How can I prove that?” He asks. There’s a bite to it that’s familiar. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Niall says. “Have you seen this before?” He gestures to the world around them. Another brick falls, and the floor beneath them shudders under the weight.

“No,” Zayn says. “The dream isn’t just collapsing, it’s like its –”

“Self-destructing,” Another voice finishes. “Trying to pull itself away from the situation. Haven’t you got it yet, Niall? This isn’t Elliot Parker’s dream. This is yours.”

Everything in Niall falls apart.

*

“Niall,” Zayn says. Niall opens his eyes.

He’s in Paris, and Zayn is beside him on the bed. He looks rumpled and soft, and something in Niall’s heart twists when he looks at him – something that’s more familiar than he should be, than he should let himself be.

“Niall,” Zayn says again. “Niall, we’re not here. This isn’t real.”

The bed crashes through the floor. The ceiling follows them down. Niall is reaching for his gun. The scene jumps again.

*

Niall is tied to a chair in the middle of a warehouse. There’s someone standing over him.

He doesn’t know how he got here.

He doesn’t know where Louis is, where Liam is, where Harry is.

He doesn’t know where Zayn is.

The ground beneath him is shaking, the walls are shaking. Simon is looking down at Niall, mouth curled in a way that’s eerily familiar. The set of his eyes is harsh, and he looks all too happy to have Niall tied up like this, unable to get away.

Vaguely, Niall knows that this is a dream – that he’s under the influence of somnacin. In the back of his mind, he knows that theoretically, down here, Simon can’t kill him.

People that think that dying is the worst side effect of dreaming have always been far too naive for Niall to deal with, though.

“What?” He asks. His voice comes out as a croak, almost as though it’s in disuse. Everything in him feels like he’s been in a losing battle with a train.

Simon grins. His teeth are shiny white, and his hands are clasped in front of him; Niall wants to laugh at how stereotypically _villain_ he looks. Niall’s whole life is a really, really bad movie: one where everything happens when the heroes are asleep.

Niall laughs at the thought, what a terrible movie that would be.

“Something funny, Horan?” Simon says.

“Yeah,” Niall says back. “The fact that I ever trusted you.”

Simon’s teeth are far too white; it offsets the sincerity of his smile. Not that Niall thinks Simon’s ever sincere. “I did always find that strange. You were all so _good_ , Niall, but so lazy. It’s too easy to just fling money at you, give you all jobs. This whole thing was so easy.”

“What would you need us for?” Niall says. He’s trying to be flippant, but his heart is thumping in his chest. Pain is in the mind, and Niall’s always been too far in his own head.

“What wouldn’t someone like me need the best dreamers in the world for? It’s always useful to have useful people owe you favours,” Simon shrugs. He’s in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and he’s standing, effortlessly relaxed. Niall used to like that about Simon: it’s nice to contrast chaos with calm. Simon always seemed so calm.

“If we’re the best, then why are you doing this?” Niall asks. Simon laughs.

“Maybe you’re not the best anymore. Maybe I’m just bored. I don’t know, Niall. This is your dream, not mine.”

“If this was your plan. If this is always what you were going to do, then why did you fight me and Harry so hard on getting Louis on the job? Why would you even try to ignore us on that.”

“Well, I couldn’t have you thinking that this was always the plan now, could I? Can’t make things too easy for you all, you know.”

The walls collapse again.

*

Niall’s outside the café, and his lighter is in his hand. He wants to flick it open – but he’s scared about what he’ll see. Instead, he just clutches it in his hand, feels the familiar weight of it.

“Niall,” It’s Zayn, leaning down and whispering in his ear. “Niall, you have to wake up. I’ve found the others, they’re okay. We’ll do it together. C’mon, Niall, you have to wake up.”

The café crashes down beside them.

*

This time, Zayn’s tied to the chair, and Niall is standing where Simon was. Zayn looks up at him.

“ _Niall_ ,” He says. “You have to break the loop. Harry and Louis, Liam, even they’re all stuck too – but you’re the dreamer. You have to break the loop.”

“What loop?” Niall asks, he’s not even embarrassed about the desperation slipping into his voice, the way his hands are shaking. Everything is falling apart. Niall has been dreaming for years – and he’s never seen anything like this.

“What loop?” Simon says. It’s a high-pitched mockery of Niall’s words. He walks up behind Niall, and slings an arm over his shoulders. Casual, fun, the way Liam touches him sometimes.

Zayn is still tied to the chair. He looks at Niall, his eyes wide open – and Niall can see every unsaid word still slipping in the space between them. “It’s like Louis, innit?” Zayn says, “Like when he couldn’t get back, and see his mum. It’s that kind of loop. You have to, I don’t know. You have to let it go, it’s not your fault, yeah. Ed wasn’t your fault.”

“Except,” Simon says, quietly. “Except maybe it was.” He tuts, sounding disappointed. “Your research just keeps slipping, doesn’t it, Niall? Didn’t realise that the mark was militarised on inception. Didn’t even realise that there was no job at all, here. What’s going wrong, Niall? Has Zayn Malik fucked you up that badly?”

Zayn’s jaw tightens, “Niall,” He says. Pleads. “Niall, listen to me. Louis and Harry and Liam, they’re all stuck in this dream too. You love them, right – you love them all, and they know, yeah? They know that this isn’t your fault. We all fell for it, didn’t we? Niall, c’mon. This is your dream. You have to break the loop. Everything’s collapsing – we can’t spend the full three hours under in a situation like this.”

“Shoot yourself out,” Niall says. He wants to choke.

Simon laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Niall. Can’t shoot themselves out if the sedative has been mixed with the one from inception, can they? Worse, even. Sends you into limbo straight away. Either the dream resets, or you lose your mind.”

“Niall,” Zayn says, his voice cracks on the word. Everything twists around them.  

*

Niall’s apartment in London. Zayn’s never been here, but this time he sees Harry, sitting on the sofa – except, when Harry turns to look at him, he realises he doesn’t have a face.

*

Liam’s mum’s house, and Liam’s there. Everything seems pixelated and faulty, and then Zayn appears, touches Liam’s shoulder, both of them say,

“Niall,” At the same time.

*

The warehouse, Louis asleep on the sofa. Louis awake on a chair. Louis everywhere, all of them speaking.

Niall knows that one of them is the real Louis, but he can’t hear him over all of the overlapping voices. He calls out, trying to find order – but everything shakes, and then the window panes smash, one by one.  

*

Simon’s laughter is trickling over the top of every scenario.

Niall’s subconscious is militarised – he has the strongest defences out of anybody else – but he doesn’t know what he’s trying to protect himself against, here. Whatever Simon has done – however he managed to infiltrate their somnacin and dose them with some unknown sedative, he’s swinging everything out of proportion.

Niall knows, realistically, that he needs a kick – but he doesn’t know how to do it, he can’t find a way.

Every time he finds a ledge, or a height, or something that he can tip himself off of – the dream shudders again, twists away, spirals out of his control like water draining down a sink.

*

Toronto. Where Zayn first kissed Niall – where they first fucked.

Niall has a love-hate relationship with Toronto; he hates that he loves it. Really, the way Niall feels about Toronto is just a further extension of how he feels about Zayn.

Zayn, who’s standing, looking at the sofa with something that Niall doesn’t know how to name in his expression. Zayn, who takes a half aborted step forwards and whispers, “ _Niall_.”

Niall can’t hear Simon, here. Niall can’t feel him at all. There’s something about this that feels more stable than all of the other dreams combined.

“I don’t know how to stop this,” Niall tells him. Zayn just looks at him.

“Why are we in Toronto, Niall?” He asks. Niall looks around, looks at the sofa, then at Zayn. Zayn is still standing there – watching Niall. He’s too far away, Niall thinks. He’s always too far away.

“Why do you think?” He says. “Why do you think that it’s always you here? I can’t get through to the other three, can’t see them properly for more than a second, but you’re fucking everywhere, Zayn. My whole mind is crawling with you. We’re skipping through all the most intimate parts of my head, and you’re the fucking focus of every single one. This is the most fucked up situation of my life – I could literally lose my fucking mind, and you’re still the centre of it all. Why do you _think_ we’re in Toronto, Zayn?”

Zayn’s bottom lip quivers, just slightly. It’s a movement so small that Niall wouldn’t have noticed at all, were it not for his fascination with Zayn’s lips, his mouth. A movement so miniscule no one but Niall would see – but then, Niall see’s everything about Zayn – except for the stuff that actually matters.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn says. “I’m sorry about a lot of things, like, but I’m so sorry that I made you feel in any way like you couldn’t, I dunno, tell me things. This whole situation is so fucked up, but I just want you to know, Niall. Like, I need you to know that –”

This time, it’s less like the walls collapse, and more like they’re yanked down around him. Niall screams in anger.

*

He opens his eyes, and he’s tied to the same chair as before. Simon’s there again, his eyebrows are raised.

“Touching,” He says. “That you tried to hide in your memories. Stupid, though. Memories have an origin, which means that they’re easy to trace. Real dreams are a lot harder to follow, they’re –”

“I know how dreams work, Simon,” Niall says. Simon laughs.

“Do you?” He asks, dryly. “That’s good, then.” Then he shoots Niall in the leg.

The bullet lands in Niall’s shin, and there’s a split second of heat before Niall feels the snapping of the bones and tendons. Niall knows – from getting shot before – that you can die from a leg wound. You can die from a cut anywhere in your body, as long as there’s enough blood pooling out of it. Niall tries to move his leg, feels his foot twitching like it’s having a seizure, and is saved from screaming only by his own gag reflex.

“Pain is in the mind, Niall,” Simon repeats. Niall would give him the finger, but he can’t move his hands. His leg is so sore now that there are spots of black appearing in his vision, and he thinks he’s close to passing out. He can still, vaguely, feel his foot spasmimg from where the tendon has been damaged. He gags again.

There’s another shot. This time, Niall feels it in his side, just above his hip. This is a cleaner shot – the bullet missing bone, and he feels it pass through the flesh of his body and impale itself into the back of the chair.

“Fun fact,” Simon says. “I debated using a knife. You know, getting stabbed hurts a lot more than getting shot? You’re a lot more likely to die from a stab wound, as well. Easier to rip something, you know.”

Niall has a thousand retorts in his head, sharp witted and cutting – but he can’t get them out through the bile that’s piling up in his stomach, through the choking feeling, through the awful, horrible feeling that he’s going to die.

 _This is a dream_ , he thinks. Then, _I have something to cut the rope._

This time – when the walls collapse around him, his eyes are open just enough to see the look of surprise on Simon’s face.

*

He opens his eyes on a rooftop of Stadium House, in Cardiff. He takes a moment to place him

The sun is setting, and there’s a gentle wind in the air. He looks around, and sees that Louis, Harry, Liam and Zayn are all standing, looking at him. They look shaken, but they’re here.

“So,” Louis says, looking down at his hands. “Simon’s a bit of a prick then.”

Harry shakes his head, “Are you okay, Niall? This is your dream. I don’t even –”

“I’m fine,” He says. “S’all in the mind, yeah?” He grins, but he can feel the way it wobbles, the phantom pain in his leg is still present, the stinging in his side. He feels like he could keel over at any moment, like the breeze could blow him away. Liam takes a step forwards, and Niall leans away from him, instinctively. He doesn’t need Liam right now. Not right now.

He looks over to Zayn. He’s standing slightly further back than the other three. There are bags under his eyes, and his hands are shoved deep into his pockets. His head is still shaved – but Niall remembers when it was long enough to tangle his fingers in. Long enough to pull on.

Niall’s heart hurts.

“You know what you have to do,” Zayn says, turning to meet Niall’s gaze face on. His face is drawn, tight. Zayn has never been very good with heights - he’s always been the first to take the cold option of a bullet to the head. It hurts a lot – but it’s also a lot more instant.

Other than the one time – when he fucked it up.

This moment isn’t about their fuck-ups, though. This isn’t about Niall, or Zayn, or the other three boys either. This is about waking up. Getting out. Killing Simon.

“I think we all have to,” Niall says, peering down to the pavement. The building is a long way up; the second tallest building in Cardiff. He feels slightly sick thinking about taking the plunge.

“A kick?” Louis asks. Niall nods.

“Yeah, gotta get out of the loop – get away from whatever drug Simon’s given us. I assume that a kick will still work, because if not then he’s stuck in here too. If shooting someone dead sends them into limbo. Well.”

Harry nods. His hair is blowing everywhere, and he’s chewing on his bottom lip. “Why is he doing this?” He asks, quietly. “Why would he go to all this trouble to make this happen?”

“I dunno,” Niall shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Money, probably. The point is, for him to be in the dream, he’s gotta be in the room. Wake up guns blazing, lads.”

“I love it when you go all James Bond, Nialler,” Louis says. His smile is sharp, and he steps forwards so that he’s beside Niall – near to the edge of the roof. He leans down – mimicking Niall’s actions from earlier, and looking over the edge. “So,” He says. “We gonna Thelma and Louise it? All hold hands and jump off together?”

“Of course we are,” Liam says, stepping forwards as well. He takes Niall’s left hand, and Niall laughs. Liam’s hands are big, and calloused – but they’re warm too, and always comforting. Harry takes Liam’s other free hand, and Louis takes Harry’s.

The four of them stand there – on the edge of the roof, and Niall thinks about how they would look, were this anything but a dream. Four wild, barely contained people in some kind of mad suicide pact. He laughs, and Liam squeezes his hand gently.

“Coming, Zayn?” Louis asks.

Zayn is still standing a few metres back – eyeing the position of their feet warily. It’s strange, seeing him so cut off from the rest of them – as though he’s a different entity entirely. Zayn could exist apart from all of them easily, occupy a different world. There’s a heavy feeling in Niall’s throat when he considers how lucky they are to still have Zayn around them.

“Yeah,” Zayn says. “Alright.”

He closes the distance. Takes Niall’s hand.

All five of them jump off the roof together.

*

Niall wakes up on the floor of Elliot Parker’s private practise. Pulling the line out of his arm, he grabs his gun.

Beside him – without looking – he can tell that the other four are doing it too. Niall doesn’t care, though – he can still feel the walls shaking, still hear Zayn telling him to wake up. He can still feel his bone snapping, and the blood pouring out of him.

Simon wakes up. Niall shoots him in the shin.

The noise that he lets out is animalistic. Niall takes perverse pleasure in the way that he seems unable to hold his noises in. He writhes on the floor, hand twitching towards his leg – as though he wants to clutch it, but is too scared that he’ll make the wound worse. Niall looks down at him, unimpressed.

“Pain is in the mind, Simon,” He says.

Then he shoots Simon in the side. This time, he’s not as clean with it – purposefully lets it hit the top of the hipbone. The bone makes a sickening sound as the bullet shatters it, and Simon’s whole body jerks again, the movement harsh – as though someone is pulling the strings on a marionette.

“Don’t,” Simon chokes out.

Louis, from somewhere behind Niall, laughs. “C’mon, Niall. He isn’t worth it, just shoot him in the fucking head, yeah?” He says.

Niall considers this. Then he shoots him in the neck. “The thing about fucking with the best, Simon, is that we’re the best. Have fun drowning in your own blood.”

Then he takes the PASIV, and walks out.

*

When they get back to the warehouse, Niall takes one, tired look around the cracked furniture, the shoddy lab, the uncomfortable chairs. He looks around, slowly, takes it all in. Thinks of hotel beds, of sleepless nights, of the feeling of a gunshot to the shin.

He thinks about people he loves betraying him, about shooting himself in the head. He thinks about the body count in his life going up.

Then he realises that now, now is the time to do what he couldn’t do after inception. Now is the time to get out. To leave.

“I’m retiring,” He says, to the room at large. Everyone’s heads snap to look at him.

“What?” Louis says, shocked. His eyes are wide, and Niall wants to laugh; Louis loves dreaming, couldn’t leave it behind even for his son. It’s not a flaw, it’s just a difference. Louis will never understand Niall’s decision – but Niall knows that he owes it to try and explain to him.

“I’m just. I just killed a man, and,” He holds up his hand, cutting them off before they can talk over him, “Yes, the man I killed was a scumbag, but I’m tired, and covered in blood, and just had to jump off a building so I didn’t get stuck forever in my own fucking mind. I thought, I dunno, I thought after inception that I still had to prove myself – and people still asked me for favours, and I was so fucking _angry_ that I couldn’t really leave anything behind.”

At this, Liam scratches the back of his neck, sheepishly. Zayn doesn’t look away from Niall’s face.

“I’m just tired. I wanna sit in my fancy flat in London, and stay in bed. I want to actually, properly sleep again. I want to, I don’t know, wake up late on a Sunday and watch some golf, go for a walk in the park. I don’t want to be staying up until fucking six in the morning in a shitty hotel bed trying to figure out if the subconscious projections of some fucked up business man are going to be mildly angry, or homicidal. So, I’m retiring.”

There’s silence for a few minutes. All of them stand there, surrounded by months of research for a job that didn’t even exist.

Harry is the first to break the silence. “Well,” He says. “We’ll be sure to visit you.”

Louis laughs, shaking his head. “With all your free time, you can swing by Briana’s, see that she’s not destroying all of the English in my son. I need him to be supporting the right football teams. None of that American football bollocks, innit.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great, Niall,” Liam says, soft. “It’ll be hard doing a job with the best point man out of the business.”

Zayn says nothing. Instead, he turns around and walks out the door of the warehouse.

*

It’s been three months, and Niall is finding that retirement suits him.

London is as faced paced and busy as he needs it to be, everything at his fingertips – anonymous enough that people don’t look at him. His flat is just as nice as he remembered, shiny, open. He has three pot plants – one from Harry, Louis and Liam, respectively – and a fat ginger tabby he got from one of the local rescue centres.

She’s named Professor McGonagall, and she spends most of the day sleeping on his sofa or trying to climb her way onto his head. He is unusually fond of her.

Harry calls him infrequently. The last time he did was three weeks ago. He’d been somewhere in Nigeria, and the phone connection had been terrible, but he’d sounded happy, excited. Niall had held the phone in between his shoulder and his ear as he pottered about his kitchen, preparing food for his dinner. It had been nice – to hear about things happening to other people, not having to worry about it himself.

He’s seen Louis and Liam as well. Liam has visited a couple of times, when he’s in between jobs and Sophia. They’ve settled, again – Niall and Liam. Sometimes Niall tries to get annoyed at Liam, at all his flaws, but Liam is too stable a force in his life. Liam is too steady to rock. So now they just sit and drink beer together, watch whatever match is on the TV and complain about how tired they both are. It’s comfortable, brotherly.

Louis is Louis. He bursts in and out at will, often with more pictures of Freddie, and something ridiculous to present Niall. A magnet from Ibiza, a bottle opener from Amsterdam. He’ll take terrible selfies of the two of them and send them to Harry and Liam, then he’ll press a sloppy kiss to Niall’s cheek and be gone in the same manner he arrived.

Zayn, he hasn’t heard from. They hadn’t even seen him after the disaster of the Parker job, even Liam has been finding it difficult to get in touch with him.

Niall is fine with it. He’s coping.

His life is probably better off without Zayn in it, anyway.

*

It’s a Thursday, around one in the afternoon. Niall’s watching a re-run of _Friends_ on TV and trying to tune his guitar when the knock on the door happens.

He frowns – he had no plans to meet anyone, and only a few select people know that he lives here. He spends most of his time trying to keep himself to himself. He gets up, slowly. Everything is on edge.

Niall had forgotten what it’s like to feel put out about something.

Creeping towards the door, he slides his gun out of the drawer from the chest in his hallway. The weight of it in his hands is comforting and familiar; he takes a second just holding it in his palm. The last time this gun was fired – he was shooting Simon Cowell in the neck. He smiles to himself at the thought.

Then, he goes to stare through the peephole.

On the other side of his door, Zayn Malik is standing. He’s looking directly at the peephole, and his eyes are wide, open. The colour of them is something it felt like Niall forgot, and he takes a startled breath in. Then he steps back and opens the door.

Zayn’s wearing a creased white t-shirt, a stain near the hem. His jeans are old and threadbare at the bottom, and there’s a hat jammed over his shaved head. His right hand is nervously twisting the rings on his other hand, and he’s chewing on his bottom lip.

Everything about him is everything Niall thought he’d never see again. He feels floored with it, he feels like he’s on the peak of a roller coaster – looking down into the surge of nothing, breath stuck in his ribs.

“Hey,” Zayn says. It’s quiet. Somewhere in the background, canned laughter breaks out over the television that Niall left on.

“Hey,” Niall croaks back. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Zayn’s mouth contorts, and he twists his ring again. “Yeah, I, uh. Had some things to sort out, you know?”

“Not really,” Niall says. Zayn laughs, a single exhalation of air.

“Yeah, guess you wouldn’t. What, with being retired and all, like. Um. It’s just, Simon’s death. Kinda put, like, a vacuum in dreamshare for a while. Things were a little wild. I was tryna sort it out.”

“Did you do it?” Niall asks. Zayn looks up from where he’d been staring at the floor and raises his eyebrows.

“M’here, aren’t I?”

Niall looks at him; at the way he’s standing – shoulders strong – but hands twitching. He looks nervous, but his feet are planted. This is Zayn Malik with something to say; this is Zayn Malik that’s hear for a _reason_. This a Zayn Malik that’s not going to run.

“Why are you here?”

Zayn looks at him, breathes in, and then out. In those few seconds, Niall swears that everything in the world slows down – the record scratches at the end. Because, when Zayn opens his mouth – Niall knows what he’s going to say before he says it.

“I’m here, ‘cause,” He stops, takes another breath. “I’m here, because I figure it’s about time I told you that I’m in love with you too, yeah?”

Niall looks at him, at the rings on his fingers, the curve of his neck. Niall looks at the shape of him, the silhouette of him in Niall’s hallway – and he thinks about Toronto, about Paris, about all the countries of the world in which he knew Zayn. He thinks about the burning anger of inception, of the betrayal. Then he thinks about Zayn crashing through every single dream on the Parker job, holding Niall’s hand and jumping off that ledge with him.

For so long, Niall thought that he and Zayn were an earthquake, a tsunami. Some great, natural disaster destined to end in destruction. He convinced himself that there wasn’t a beginning, only an end.

Perhaps, Niall thinks, they still are destined for destruction. Perhaps this will end in a broken window and another year of broken hearts. Maybe neither of them is meant to be. Maybe dreaming will tear both of them apart from the inside out. There’s no guarantees in dreamshare. There’s no guarantees in relationships.

Niall doesn’t care.

He looks at Zayn Malik – Zayn - standing in his doorway, soft hands and open eyes. It feels like something he’s been dreaming about for years, like an impossible thing happening in front of him.

It’s not a dream. Neither of them are sleeping.

In fact, this is the first time that Niall has been truly awake in years.

“Do you want to come in?” He asks.

Zayn smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank fuck this fic is over, because I swear to god it's been haunting me for ages. It initially started as a pipe dream after I thought, "Huh, I should rewrite all my favourite movies into fanfiction." However, my top five movies are (in order): The Social Network, Fight Club, Inception, Trainspotting and Wristcutters: A Love Story. After looking at this list, I realised that the other four have themes too dramatic and depressing for me to deal with in a fic. So, the Inception AU it was. 
> 
> Man, it was tough to write. I didn't know what I was doing at all. In fact, the whole, "Niall's dream/villian Simon/dream collapse loop" was not my initial plan. In fact, when I wrote it I said, "Shit, didn't see this coming," out loud. Whoops. As with most things I write, this is unbeta-d - so I apologise for any grammar/spelling/continuity errors. Please, please let me know about them! 
> 
> More notes:  
> \- Elliot Alexander Parker's name is a reference to the characters in The Social Network, because I love that film. Mark Eliot Zuckerberg, Eduardo Alexandre Saverin, Sean Parker. I would like it to be noted that I anglisised "Alexander" as Parker was a white man.  
> \- Zayn being in Singapore is also an (obscure) TSN reference: after the depositions Saverin moved there.  
> \- When Niall says, "je dois y aller" this is supposed to mean, "I have to go". I went on a few websites trying to figure out if this would be a good phrase to use, and in the end went for it - however I was kicked out of French for being so shite, so I apologise if I got it wrong.  
> \- Logically, the forger is supposed to represent actors, so Harry really should have been the forger. As well as this, Zayn does a lot of art, so it would make sense for him to be the architect. I did debate this for quite a while - but I liked the symbolism of putting Niall and Zayn in the same roles that Arthur and Eames fulfil. Also, Zayn once said he'd like to be an actor, so work with me here.  
> \- I don't have any feelings of ill-will towards Simon Cowell, and was actually sort of annoyed at myself for making him a villian. It seems very cliché. However, I was initially going to make Niall's father a villian before I decided that was too complex. As a result, Simon was the easiest second choice.  
> \- I know I make the characters smoke far too often in fics. I don't know why I do this, as I actually don't like smoking cigarettes in real life at all. Please, kids, don't smoke.  
> \- I KNOW I wrote a WHOLE FIC without one significant female character. It's okay. I'm disgusted with myself as well.  
> \- Finally, if you want to ask me anything else then feel free to hmu on tumblr @[niallhiran](http://niallhiran.tumblr.com). Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
